Change, he promised. The line-up for the We Are One concert, the first big public bash of the inaugural celebrations, suggested something different. Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, U2 ... it reeked of the old, not the new. All that was missing was Bob Geldof.

The reality, thankfully, was different, and cynicism was banished into the cold afternoon air. Old rockers from James Taylor to, yes, Bon Jovi, set the tone, while a who's who of African-American stars hammered away at the theme that yes, this really was happening, and yes, change had indeed come.

They were all there: Stevie Wonder, partnered by Shakira and Usher, revisited his peak of the early 70s for Higher Ground, a testimony to the potential for change. Bon Jovi singing a duet with Bettye LaVette on Sam Cooke's A Change is Gonna Come may well have provided the highlight. The song, a storming piece of 60s R&B, was adopted by the civil rights movement in the 60s.

Here, it provided a celebratory note as what had begun as a sombre blend of awards show and pageant turned into a joyous acknowledgement of what has happened and what is about to happen.

The mix of decorum and celebration made for a sometimes uneasy format.

Like an awards show, pairs of celebrities took the stage to offer readings or introduce clips of former presidential inaugurations, from Lincoln to Eisenhower. Whose idea was it to get Jack Black and Rosario Dawson to do Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt?

Musically there were off notes, too. Mary J Blige, resplendent in a cream outfit and a pair of gold wellies, lumbered through Bill Withers' Lean On Me; Herbie Hancock, accompanying Sheryl Crow and will.i.am on a leaden cover of Bob Marley's One Love, seemed to think this should be the avant garde presidency. And one can only surmise that John Mellencamp was there as a nod to Joe Biden's musical taste. There can be no other explanation.

Towards the end a scruffy old man was introduced. He was Pete Seeger, another civil rights veteran, who sang This Land is Your Land, a song that every American child learns to sing. Seeger, a sprightly 89, revelled in the moment, shouting the lyrics to the crowd. It was a moment of change made tangible: a figure marginalised, brought to the nation's capital to salute the new.

• This article was amended on Monday 19 January 2009. Woody Guthrie, not Pete Seeger, wrote the song This Land is Your Land. This has been corrected.